Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/110

1774] I would not have done so. Good-bye. I am expecting the letter you promised me. I am much hurried. 1774.

I yield to the need of my heart, mon ami : I love you ; I feel as much pleasure and anguish as if it were the first and the last time in my life that I should say those words to you. Ah ! why have you condemned me to say them ? Why am I reduced to do so ? You will know some day — alas ! you will then understand me. It is dreadful to me to be no longer free to suffer for you and through you. Is that loving you enough ? Adieu, mon ami.

At all the instants of my life. 1774.

Mon ami, I suffer, I love you, and I await you.

Tuesday, 1774.

Man ami, you make me prove that we like better to give than to' pay our debts. I have several letters to answer, and to come to them I must begin by talking with you. Mon ami, have you given me, since last night, one minute, two minutes ? Have you said, " She suffers, she loves me, and I must blame myself for a part of her sorrows " ? It is not to distress you or to give you remorse that I say that, but to make you kind, indulgent, and not angry when a few cries of pain escape me. As for me, I have thought of you, and much, but my time has been occupied. — Good God ! was there ever such pride, such disdain of others, such contempt, such injustice, in a word, such an assemblage and assortment of all that peoples hell and lunatic asylums ? All that was last night in my apartment, and the walls and ceilings did not crumble down ; a miracle !

In the midst of the sorry writers, smatterers, fools, and pedants, among whom I spent my day, I thought of you alone